Friday, June 10, 2016

The Friday Sex Blog [Tantra]

Hola mi Gente,
This weekend is a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and pride. I'm looking forward to enjoying some of the festivities, especially the Fiesta del Barrio on Saturday.

What follows is a very brief and very inadequate attempt to elaborate on
tantra.

Tantra

Every woman’s nature is to be a priestess,
to be an initiator. Only when a man knows how to give her pleasure will she be
radiant, devoted, loving, satisfied, and able to be in the fullness of the
whole relationship.

Sex lies at the root of life, and it is
crucial that we learn reverence for it. By reverence I don’t mean to say that
sex should only be practiced under certain conditions and only
with certain individuals. By reverence I mean that we must come to the realization
that sex is an energy -- a divine and transformative energy -- and that we must
learn to revere and cultivate that energy.

More than any other experience, orgasm
brings us closer to the divine. This is why organized religions have always
tried to control sex: ecstatic people are a free people. In the moment of
orgasm, a bonding between the right and left hemispheres of the brain occurs.
When the creative, intuitive right side of the brain fuses with the center of
logic and thinking on the left side, an akashicfield (“zero-point”) of total connection can
be accessed. The ego walls come tumbling down, time and space cease to exist,
and you become one with energy and consciousness.

This form of sexual practice transcends
mere ego needs so often heard in popular culture: songs wailing about “Baby, I
need you,” and “I can’t live without you.” Sabotaged by ego needs (the “Mini
Me”), sex becomes a quick exercise in tension and release. It obstructs the
free flow of energy.

Sexuality is a very natural instinct, a
powerfully creative force. From the tantric perspective, each of us can put
that force to work in the service of healing, transformation, and the
realization of our potentials. Yet, in many ways, we are conditioned to think
about sex in a way that confuses us. We straddle the two extremes of viewing
sex as something natural that should not be interfered with, and the perception
of sex as something hidden, dirty, and taboo. Of course, that last part is what
sometimes makes it so interesting and brings violence and exploitation into
sex. In this country, we find it so difficult even to talk about sex without
defining it in deviant terms, we have to fight through all the cultural taboos
to have a good time, it seems.

I write about sex mostly because I feel
the damage caused by the anti-sex cultural attitudes can’t begin to be
measured. Instead of celebrating sex as a creative force, we turn it into a
shameful, guilt-ridden affair. Religions want to make people believe that a
priest is necessary in order to have a relationship with the divine. They
discourage any attempt to have a direct experience of “God” on their own.
Religious institutions, for the most part, do not want us to wake up to our
natural ecstasy. The moment they wake up, a person becomes a free thinker and
for those in power, a free thinker is a dangerous individual.

Tantra developed as a rebellion against
the repressive moralistic codes of organized religions in India around 5000 b.c.e. It developed particularly as a
response to the widespread notion that sexuality had to be denied in order to
attain spiritual enlightenment. Tantra means “weaving,” in the sense of
bringing together the many and often contradictory aspects of the self into one
harmonious whole. Tantra also means “expansion,” in the sense that once
our own energies are understood and unified, we grow and expand into joy.
Truly, Tantra is the “yoga of love.”

Characterized by what the Tibetan
Tantric tradition calls crazy wisdom, Tantric masters scandalized mainstream
society and were often condemned and persecuted. Crazy Wisdom is a tradition in
which the teacher uses paradoxical stories, seemingly absurd questions, and
unexpected behavior in order to tease, jolt, and provoke people to drop
mainstream conditioning and conventional attitudes so that they may embrace the
whole spectrum of life, with no conflict between the sacred and the profane,
the spiritual and the sexual.

There’s no way I could do justice to
the Tantric vision in a one-page Word document, but I will say that the Tantric
vision accepts everything. There’s nothing forbidden in Tantra. Everything that
a person experiences, regardless of whether it is judged as good or bad, is an
opportunity for learning. For example, a situation in which you experience
sexual frustration is not viewed negatively in tantra, it is viewed as an
opportunity for learning.

The best way I’ve heard tantra
described is through the use of the metaphor of weeds. While weeds, if left
unattended can bring a garden to ruin, one can also use weeds to fertilize the
soil and make it richer. In this way, Tantra utilizes energies usually judged
as negative as a path toward growth.

According to Tantra, sex is first a
matter of energy, and Tantra views energy as the movement of life. For example,
the nucleus and electrons of an atom have a certain rhythmic movement. The same
goes for molecules, cells, and organs of the human body. Similarly, each organ
-- the heart, diaphragm, intestines, lungs, brains, etc. -- pulsate to the
rhythm of life. The vibrations from these rhythmic movements generate
bioelectric currents that stream continuously through the whole body. They also
generate energy fields that surround the body, and our moods and emotions
generate specific vibrations that alter these energy fields as well.

One last thing, Surrender is an
essential aspect of Tantra. There is, however, much confusion about what
surrender means. People are suspicious of this term, which is often equated
with loss of free will and personal power. In fact, they are confusing
surrender with submission, which is (to me) a passive attitude that implies
giving up responsibility for one’s behavior. True surrender, at least within
the Tantric tradition, is a conscious choice made from free will. It means
opening your heart and trusting the person you are with.

Tantra is about wholeness, of
embracing everything, because every situation is an opportunity to become more
aware about who you are and about how you can expand your capacities. Because
Tantra embraces wholeness, it embraces opposites, seeing them not as
contradictions but as complements. The concepts of male and female therefore
are placed apart, forever divided by a gender gap, but are viewed as part of a
continuum that meet and merge in every human being. Tantra recognizes that in
each individual there exists both a masculine and feminine quality.

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My life experiences have led me to strive to help others move their lives in a positive direction, exploring opportunities that would otherwise be closed to them. I like to think I sit at the crossroads of the dialectic between knowledge and action. I hope that what transpires here is reflective of my beliefs.